James Heneage - The Walls of Byzantium

One of these was Luke Magoris. He was looking up at the walls of Monemvasia and thinking.

Twenty thousand of us living in this labyrinth and that many cats. How do we sleep at night?

It was a thought that had occurred to him before.

Matthew, Nikolas and Arcadius had for once stopped talking and were too far away for attack. Luke turned his body so that the entirety of the city lay cradled between his feet.

Above its wall, rising from the rocks from which Luke had just dived, sat the jumble of small houses that made up the lower town, nudged by the splashes of oleander and bougainvilleia that sprouted between. Small rooms led on to small balconies, and the houses crowded the steep slopes like an audience taking its seats. A wash of early sunshine bathed the mosaic of a million terracotta tiles and lit, to a dazzling white, the bell tower of the Elkomenos Church. And above, immense and implacable, sat the pitted rock of the Goulas.

The Goulas .

Was there anything so magnificent in the world? Its sheer sides rose from the skirts of the lower town, deep-scarred by the stairway that twisted its way up its face.

Luke’s gaze travelled up the stairs until it reached the walls above. In this light it was difficult to see what was made by man and what by God until armour flashed from the ramparts. Above, on a gently rising plateau, lay the mansions, churches and gardens of the upper town, where the richest of the city’s inhabitants had their homes.

At the very summit sat the squat, reassuring spectacle of the citadel, home to the city’s small garrison and supposedly impregnable. From its tower flew two standards, limp symbols of the split loyalties of this little city. In a fresher wind, one would show the double-headed eagle of the Byzantine Empire, the other the black castle of the Mamonas family.

Luke looked down at his body as it was swayed by the passing waves, enjoying the warm current that fingered his back like velvet. He was tall for his sixteen years and had a powerful physique to match. His father’s lessons in the art of fighting had given him broad shoulders and muscular arms. His legs, meanwhile, were long but bowed from time spent on horseback. His father was a Varangian Guardsman and had told him that the Varangians had always fought on foot, surrounding the Emperor with a shield of iron on the battlefield. But, from birth, Luke had shown an extraordinary ability with horses. So Pavlos Mamonas, Archon of Monemvasia and by far its richest citizen, had decreed that his Varangian training should be interspersed with time spent at the Mamonas stud.

Luke dipped his head back into the water, throwing it forward to look directly into the sun, spray hitting the sea around him like pebbles. He tilted his body, swinging it back round so that his feet faced south.

South to Cape Maleas and round it to Mistra. Where I should be now .

Someone spoke.

‘Can you see the beacon from there?’

It was Matthew, closest of the friends and nearest to Luke in age. He had swum up to him so that their heads were almost touching.

‘It’s been lit for days,’ he continued. ‘The Turks must be almost at Mistra’s walls.’ He paused to blow water from his nose. ‘Our fathers should’ve let us go.’

Our fathers. My father .

Luke had been so careful that morning. He’d taken an age to creep down the wooden staircase, avoiding the creaking step. He’d taken the sword silently from the chest, and then tiptoed through the door of the house on to the steps to the street below. One of his shoes had been loose and, so narrow was the alley, he’d been able to stretch a hand to the opposite wall to pull it on.

He’d picked his way through the shortening shadows, his cheek brushing jasmine tumbling from a neighbour’s wall, to arrive at a small square where a mulberry tree offered shade to a lizard darting from stone to warming stone.

Only then had something broken the still of the sleeping city. The voice of his father, Joseph.

‘You’ve taken your birthday present early, Luke,’ he’d said, pointing at the sword. His voice was low, always low. ‘Couldn’t you have waited for me to give it to you?’

Silence.

‘Were you going to Mistra?’

Luke had nodded.

‘With the other three?’

He’d nodded again, and found his voice. ‘The beacon’s been lit for three days. The Despot needs us.’

‘You?’ One eyebrow had lifted in surprise. ‘Four Varangian boys barely sprouting beards? You think so?’

‘You’ve taught us to fight, Father. We can help. Our loyalty is to the empire.’

‘Your loyalty is to the Archon of Monemvasia.’

‘Which is part of the empire. Father, we’re not bound by any oath to the Mamonas family as you are.’

Joseph had nodded then, his hand stroking the enormous beard that lay on his chest like a blazon. ‘But you owe some loyalty to me, Luke. Enough at least not to sneak away like a thief. With my sword.’

‘Which was to be mine on my sixteenth birthday. Today.’

Then they’d stood and stared at each other, Luke seeing the broken nose, the long mane of straw hair that, unplaited, fell to his father’s waist, the blue eyes he’d been graced to inherit which came from some island far, far to the west.

‘We are Varangians, Luke,’ Joseph had said quietly, ‘whether sworn or not. I am here to guard the Archon as you will be one day. We’re not free to take sides.’

‘Not even when our Despot has an army of Turks marching to destroy our capital at Mistra?’

‘Not even then.’

Now, he lay upon his back and felt the sun on his eyelids and thought about his father and the complicated business of duty. His head bumped against Matthew’s.

‘I must return to the house,’ he said, turning on to his front. ‘If we’re not going to Mistra then I’d better get up to the Mamonas twins. They want to ride out to the stud.’

Inside the house, his mother had laid out Luke’s riding clothes on the table: leather breeches with an extra layer on the insides to protect his thighs and new boots of untreated hide that still stank of the tanner’s yard. His father had put the sword back in the chest and locked it.

A lunch of bread, cream cheese and salted pork lay in a napkin next to a bowl of dried figs stuffed with chestnuts: Luke’s favourite. He stretched out to take a handful while his mother’s back was turned and wrapped them quickly in a napkin.

‘The figs will make you bilious,’ Rachel said, ‘and I was saving them for tonight.’

She swung round, laughing. ‘Oh, take them. I can make more.’

How he loved that laugh. It had cast its spell over the two men of the family since Luke’s first day on earth. In her mid-13 thirties, Rachel’s unlined face still radiated the beauty that comes from inner calm. Everything about her was gentle.

Luke hugged her.

‘Silly boy!’ She smiled, her chin against his chest as she looked up at her son. ‘Joseph, tell this thieving Varangian to get up to the palace or we’ll have no food at all to put on the table!’

Joseph walked over to his son and put hand on his shoulder before he could leave the house.

‘I know that you’re eager to fight for the Empire, Luke,’ he said gently. ‘It’s what you’ve spent all your life training to do. When the time is right you can go to Mistra, but not today.’

‘So why not Constantinople? They say there are still Varangians there.’

Joseph sighed. ‘You know why. We Varangians are here for a reason.’

Varangian .

For centuries the Varangians had guarded the Emperor in Constantinople with unquestioning loyalty. In the Great Palace, they’d stood either side of the monumental bronze doors that led into its interior. When the Emperor gave audience, seated on the elevating throne that held ambassadors in such awe, they’d assembled around his sacred person, always bearing those great axes, their distralia , on their right shoulders. The Guard Commander was called Akolouthos , which meant ‘follower’, since he was the person allowed nearest to the Emperor on official occasions. Indeed, so trusted was he that the great keys of the city were given to him whenever the Emperor went away.